My Struggle: Book 3 (4 page)

Both Mom and Dad did the cleaning in our house, which was not the norm; to my knowledge none of the other fathers did it, with the possible exception of Prestbakmo, but I had never seen him do it and actually doubted whether he would submit to that kind of work.

But on this day Dad had been to town to buy crabs at the harbor, after which he had sat in his office smoking cigarettes and perhaps marking essays, perhaps reading documents, perhaps fiddling around with his stamp collection, or perhaps reading
The Phantom.

On the other side of our creosoted garden fence, where the path to B-Max started, water from a manhole cover had flooded the forest floor. Rolf, Leif Tore’s brother, had said a few days ago that it was Dad’s responsibility. “Responsibility,” that was not a word he would normally use, so I guessed he had got it from his father. Dad was on the local council, they were the people who made the decisions on the island, and that was what Gustavsen, Leif Tore and Rolf’s father, had meant. Dad had to report the flooding so they could send someone to do the repairs. As we walked up and my attention was again caught by the unnaturally large amount of water between the small, thin trees, with the odd bit of white toilet paper floating in it, I decided to tell him if the opportunity arose. Tell him he would have to report it at the Monday meeting.

There he was! In his blue waterproof jacket, with no hood, his old jeans, which he wore whenever he was going to work in the garden, and his green knee-high boots, he rounded the corner of the house. His upper body was twisted slightly to one side as he was carrying a ladder with both hands across the lawn, and then he dug it into the ground, straightened up, and pushed it into position against the house roof.

I turned back and sped up to catch the others.

“The rainbow’s still there!” I shouted.

“We can see it, too!” Leif Tore cried.

I caught up with them at the start of the path, walked behind Trond’s yellow jacket between the trees, which shed a shower of rain every time anyone lifted a branch, down to the brown house where Molden lived. He didn’t have any young children, only a teenager with long hair, big glasses, brown clothes, and flared trousers. We didn’t even know what his name was, we just called him Molden.

The best way up to the top of what we called a mountain went past their garden, and that was the path we were taking now, slowly, because it was steep and the long, yellow grass here was slippery. Now and then I grabbed a sapling to pull myself up. Just below the summit, the mountain was bare and protruded outward, impossible to walk up, at least when it was as wet as it was now, but at the edge there was a crevice between the rock face and a gently projecting crag where you could get a foothold and easily clamber up the last few meters to the summit.

“Where’s it gone?” Trond said, the first man up.

“It was right there!” Geir said, pointing a few meters along the little plateau.

“Oh no,” Leif Tore said. “It’s down there. Look!”

Everyone turned and looked down. The rainbow was over the forest, a long way down. One end was above the trees below Beck’s house, the other near the grassy incline down to the bay.

“Shall we go down then?” Trond said.

“What if the treasure’s still here?” Leif Tore said, in the dialect we spoke. “We could at least have a peek.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s only where the rainbow is.”

“Who took it then? That’s what I’d like to know,” Leif Tore said.

“No one did,” I said. “Are you stupid or what? No one brings it either, if that’s what you think. It’s the rainbow.”

“You’re the one who’s stupid,” Leif Tore said. “It can’t just disappear all on its own.”

“It seems it can,” I said.

“No, it can’t,” Leif Tore said.

“Yes, it can,” I said. “Take a look, then. See if you can find it!”

“I want to look, too,” Trond said.

“Me too,” Geir said.

“Count me out,” I said.

They turned and walked away, glancing from side to side. I wanted to go with them, I could feel myself drawn, but it wasn’t possible now. Instead I looked at the view. It was the best vantage point anywhere. You could see the bridge almost rising from the treetops, you could see the sound, where there were always boats crossing, and you could see the big, white gasometers on the other side. You could see the island of Gjerstadholmen, you could see the new road, the low concrete bridge it crossed, you could see Ubekilen Bay from the landward side. And you could see the estate. All the red and orange roofs among the trees. The road. Our garden, Gustavsen’s garden; the rest was hidden.

The sky above the estate was almost completely blue now. The clouds toward the town, white. While on the other side, behind Ubekilen, they were still heavy and gray.

I could see Dad down there. A tiny, tiny little figure, no bigger than an ant, on top of the ladder against the roof.

Could he see me up here? I wondered.

A gust of wind blew off the sea.

I turned to watch the others. Two yellow dots and one light green one moving to and fro between the trees. The rocky plateau was dark gray, much like the sky beyond, with yellow and, in some places, whitish grass in the cracks. A branch lay there, all its weight resting on the many needle-thin side branches in such a way that the thick main stem didn’t touch the ground. It looked strange.

I had hardly ever been in the forest that lay ahead. The furthest I had gone on the path was to a large, uprooted tree, perhaps thirty meters inside. From there you could see down a slope where nothing grew but heather. With the tall, slim pine trees on both sides and the denser-growing spruces like a wall beneath, it resembled a large room.

Geir said he saw a fox there once. I didn’t believe him, but foxes were no laughing matter, so for safety’s sake we had taken with us a packed lunch and bottles of juice to the edge of the mountain, where the whole of the world as we knew it lay beneath us.

“Here it is!” Leif Tore shouted. “Wow! The pot of gold!”

“Wow!” Geir shouted.

“You can’t fool me!” I shouted back.

“Yippeeeee!” Leif Tore cried. “We’re rich!”

“I don’t believe it!” Trond shouted.

Then it all went quiet.

Had they really found it?

Of course not. They were trying to trick me.

But the end of the rainbow had been on this precise spot.

What if Leif Tore was right and the treasure hadn’t disappeared with the rainbow?

I took a few steps forward and tried to see through the juniper bushes they were standing behind.

“Ohhh, man! Look at this!” Leif Tore said.

I made up my mind in a flash and hurried over, dashing between the trees and past the bushes, then stopped.

They looked at me.

“Gotcha! Ha ha ha! We gotcha!”

“I knew all the time,” I said. “I was just coming to get you. The rainbow will be gone if we don’t hurry.”

“Oh, yes,” said Leif Tore. “We really fooled you. Admit it.”

“Come on, Geir,” I said. “Let’s go and look for the pot of gold down there.”

Feeling uncomfortable, Geir looked at Leif Tore and Trond. But he was my best friend and joined me. Trond and Leif Tore ambled along after us.

“I need a piss,” Leif Tore said. “Shall we see who can piss the furthest? Over the edge? It’ll be one great big long jet!”

Piss outdoors when Dad was down there and might be able to see?

Leif Tore was already out of his waterproof pants and fumbling with his fly. Geir and Trond had taken up positions on either side of him and were wriggling their hips and pulling down their trousers.

“I can’t piss,” I said. “I’ve just had one.”

“You haven’t,” Geir said, turning toward me with both his hands around his willy. “We’ve been together all day.”

“I had a piss while you were looking for the treasure,” I said.

The next second they were enveloped in a cloud of steam as they pissed. I stepped forward to see who won. Surprisingly, it was Trond.

“Rolf pulled his foreskin back,” Leif Tore said, closing his fly. “So he pissed much further from the get-go.”

“The rainbow’s gone,” Geir said, shaking his dick for a last time before tucking it back.

Everyone looked down over the edge.

“What shall we do now?” Trond said.

“No idea,” said Leif Tore.

“Let’s go to the boathouse, shall we?” I suggested.

“What can we do there?” said Leif Tore.

“Well, we can climb onto the roof,” I said.

“Good idea!” Leif Tore said.

We zigzagged down the slope, fought our way through the dense spruce forest, and arrived five minutes later on the gravel road that ran around the bay. The grassy hill on the other side was where we usually went skiing in the winter. In the summer and autumn we seldom went there – what was there to do? The bay was shallow and muddy, no good for swimming, the jetty was falling to pieces, and the little island off the coast was covered with shit from the colony of gulls nesting there. When we wandered around there it was mostly because we were at loose ends, like this morning. High above us, between the sloping field and the edge of the forest, there was an old, white house in which an old, white-haired lady lived. We knew nothing about her. Not her name, nor what she did there. Sometimes we peered into the house, laid our hands against the window, and pressed our faces against the glass. Not for any particular reason, nor out of curiosity, more because we could. We saw a sitting room with old furniture or a kitchen with old utensils. Near the house, past the narrow gravel road, there was a red barn seemingly on the verge of collapse. And at the very bottom, by the stream running down from the forest, there was an old, unpainted boathouse with tarred felt on the roof. Along the bed of the stream grew ferns and some plants with, relative to their thin stems, enormous leaves; if you swept them aside with your hands, in that swimming stroke the way people do, to see past the unresisting foliage, the ground appeared naked, as though the plants were deceiving us, pretending they were lush and green while in reality, beneath the dense leaves, there was almost nothing but soil. Further down, closer to the water, the earth or clay or whatever it was was a reddish color, reminiscent of rust. Occasionally a variety of things got caught there, a bit of a plastic bag or a condom, but not on days like today, when the water gushed out from the pipe under the road in an enormous torrent and only abated when it reached the little delta-like area where the water fanned out before it met the bay.

The boathouse was gray with age. In some places you could insert a hand between the planks, so we knew what the inside looked like, without any of us having been in there. After peering through these gaps for a while we directed our attention to the roof, which we were going to try to climb. In order to do so we would have to find something to stand on. Nothing in the immediate vicinity was of any use, so we snuck up to the barn and sniffed around there. First of all, we made sure there were no cars up behind the house, there was one there sometimes, the owner was a man, perhaps her son, he would occasionally stop us crossing the drive when we wanted to extend our ski run, which she never did. So we kept an eye open for him.

No car.

Some white cans strewn by the wall. I recognized them from my grandparents’ farm; it was formic acid. A rusty oil drum. A door hanging off its hinges.

Over there, though! A pallet!

We lifted it. It had almost grown into the ground. Full of woodlice and small spiderlike insects crawling all over the place as we lifted. Then we carried it between us all the way across the field and down to the boathouse. Leaned it against the wall. Leif Tore, acknowledged to be the bravest among us, was the first to have a go. Standing on the pallet, he managed to get one elbow on the roof. With his other hand he took a firm grip on the edge of the roof, and then he
launched
one leg into the air. He got it over the edge, for an instant it rested on the roof, but as soon as his body followed, he lost his grip and plunged like a sack of potatoes, unable to break his fall with his hands. He hit the pallet with his ribs and slid down to the ground.

“Agh!” he screamed. “Oh, shit. Ooohh. Ow! Ow! Ow!”

He slowly got to his feet, studied his hands, and rubbed one buttock.

“Oooh, that hurt! Someone else can try now!”

He looked at me.

“My arms aren’t strong enough,” I said.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Geir said.

If Leif Tore was known for being brave, Geir was known for being wild. Not by nature, because had it been up to him he would have stayed at home drawing and pottering about to his heart’s content all day long, but when he was challenged. Perhaps he was a bit gullible. That summer he and I had built a cart, with a great deal of help from his father, and when it was finished I got him to push me around, just by saying it would make him strong. Gullible but also foolhardy, sometimes all boundaries ceased to exist for him, then he was capable of anything.

Geir chose a different method from Leif Tore’s. Standing on the pallet, he grabbed the protruding roof with both hands and tried to
walk
up the wall, with all of his weight invested in the fingers he was holding on with. That was, of course, stupid. Even if he had managed it, he would have been standing horizontal to the ground
under
the roof, in a much worse position than when he started.

His fingers slipped and he plunged butt first onto the pallet, after which he hit the back of his head.

He gave an involuntary grunt. When he stood up I could see that he had really hurt himself. He took a few determined paces to and fro, grunting.
Nghn
! Then he mounted the pallet again. This time he adopted Leif Tore’s method. Once he had his leg over the edge, a series of electric charges seemed to shoot through him, his leg banged against the roofing felt, his body writhed, and hey presto, there he was, kneeling on the roof and looking down on us.

“Easy!” he said. “Come on! I can pull you up!”

“You cannot. You aren’t strong enough!” Trond said.

“We can give it a try at any rate,” Geir said.